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But never forget that it's Tegra. It requires several blobs and the instant Nvidia stops updating them, you're stuck with that kernel and X.

When Nvidia drops the blobsupport (5+ years from now?) there will either already be a reverse engeneered open driver that works good enough or there will be a dist with a frozen version of "xorg"-server etc al that will work with it just fine with the last blob. If by some freak reason neither solution happens, it's only $99 down the drain on hardware you've happily used 4+ years already (not counting the controller would still be usable separately). I'm sure I will spend a lot more than $99 on icecream and candy alone in the next 4 years. The ultra low pricepoint simply makes the Ouya too good to pass up (as long as the hardware actually shows up of course, but the names involved seem a bit too high profile to be part of a complete scam).

When Nvidia drops the blobsupport (5+ years from now?) there will either already be a reverse engeneered open driver that works good enough or there will be a dist with a frozen version of "xorg"-server etc al that will work with it just fine with the last blob. If by some freak reason neither solution happens, it's only $99 down the drain on hardware you've happily used 4+ years already (not counting the controller would still be usable separately). I'm sure I will spend a lot more than $99 on icecream and candy alone in the next 4 years. The ultra low pricepoint simply makes the Ouya too good to pass up (as long as the hardware actually shows up of course, but the names involved seem a bit too high profile to be part of a complete scam).

5 years is extremely optimistic. Remember that this is mobile hardware, an area where if your chip is six months old the manufacturer no longer cares about it. With the ouya bringing more interest to tegra3 it's likely to live up to a year from now, but I wouldn't put my money on any longer.

As for freezing the kernel or xorg, have you really though that through? Think of all the bug fixes you'll never see, new features you won't get, and vulnerabilities you can't patch.

Your comparison to candy is very good, actually. With the blobs this is very likely to be a disposable purchase, no good for any longer period of time. Then you'll have an incentive to buy Ouya 2, new and improved with Tegra4 (and actually supported! Until the cycle repeats.

I'm quite supprised they've chosen the tegra3 over the samsung exynox. The mali GPU is quite powerfull is it not? And atleast there's some opensource hackery going on for it. What does the tegra have? nothing?

I think they are just calling it 'open' to get high up onto the geek cred score or something.

We don't know how open the bootloader will be, but lets just assume it's open. Tegra3 kernel stuff isn't all fully mainlined yet is it? GPU is a blob. I'm sure it will be blob-loaden.

5 years is extremely optimistic. Remember that this is mobile hardware, an area where if your chip is six months old the manufacturer no longer cares about it. With the ouya bringing more interest to tegra3 it's likely to live up to a year from now, but I wouldn't put my money on any longer.

It's a mobile chip, but it hasn't been used in this way before, so parrallells are not nessecarily equal to other mobile chips.

As for freezing the kernel or xorg, have you really though that through? Think of all the bug fixes you'll never see, new features you won't get, and vulnerabilities you can't patch.

On my portable game console/HDTV-settopbox for $99 I fail to see too much relevance for l33test xorg desktop feature etc. This is not a "full computer replacement" for me at least. And unpatched vulnerabilities? Surely noone is going to hack it, put linux on it and then store personal information of any kind of relevance there, at least not while connecting it directly to the internet without a firewall? Also, that "worst case scenario" still assumes there is not enough critical mass in userbase for security patches to be backported specifically for the Ouya(1)-specific dists the next couple of years.

Your comparison to candy is very good, actually. With the blobs this is very likely to be a disposable purchase, no good for any longer period of time. Then you'll have an incentive to buy Ouya 2, new and improved with Tegra4 (and actually supported! Until the cycle repeats.

With your logic, after 1 year and 6month release cycle, I'll be able to buy an Ouya 2 with a "tegra5" for $70 (keeping the controller) and pass the Ouya1 to my parents to play HDTV content. I don't really feel too scared about that scenario somehow. But maybe thats just me *shrug*.

When Nvidia drops the blobsupport (5+ years from now?) there will either already be a reverse engeneered open driver that works good enough or there will be a dist with a frozen version of "xorg"-server etc al that will work with it just fine with the last blob. If by some freak reason neither solution happens, it's only $99 down the drain on hardware you've happily used 4+ years already (not counting the controller would still be usable separately). I'm sure I will spend a lot more than $99 on icecream and candy alone in the next 4 years. The ultra low pricepoint simply makes the Ouya too good to pass up (as long as the hardware actually shows up of course, but the names involved seem a bit too high profile to be part of a complete scam).

I don't think it is a scam.

A year from now tegra3 can very well be $100 or less (and not just the ouya).

just look at these small android/linux ARM computers for $50 bucks (also the mk802 is less than $60 in most stores):

That said, too bad the general population doesn't care about blobs. They just want a working device for 1 - 2 years. Then again, it's also the people who get to vote, and make you cringe by the choices they make.